Various Artists, Cumbia Beat Volume 1
Featured Album
Peru's take on cumbia, with Interlocking rhythms of multiple percussionists with guitars that fuzz out, weep, delay and distort
What makes Peruvian cumbia different from all other cumbias? Also known as "chicha" (after a popular fermented corn beverage), Peru's version of the ubiquitous Latin American rhythm emerged in the 1960s, when the country's mining towns and capitol city, Lima, became a churning urn of music from Venezuela, Cuba, the United States, Andean mountains, Amazonian jungles and cumbia's homeland, Colombia. And while this thoroughly danceable percussion fest of a collection is subtitled "Experimental guitar-driven tropical sounds from Peru 1966-1976," its oldest tune, Los Demonios de Corochay's "La Chichera" (from whence the style may have derived its name) is a lively dance track in which saxophone and accordion can't decide if they want to mambo, fox trot or pipe an Andean folk song.
Everything changed in 1968, once the electric guitars arrived. Two of the baddest axes around belonged to Enrique Delgado Montes, of Los Destrellos, and Berardo "Manzanita" Hernández. "Guajira Sicoldélico" by Los Destrellos is a gloriously cheesy hash of Cuban beats and California surf twang. And high, lonesome Andean huaynos visits the tropics on Manzanito y son Conjunto's trotting "Arre Caballito," with the guitarist adding voltage to Cuban acoustic tres guitar riffs. The Beatles were naturally a big influence, as demonstrated on "Aquí en la Fiesta," Los Ecos' cover of "I Don't Want to Spoil the Party."
Nuggets-era influences abound as well; witness the sheer space-pop weirdness — with a fuzz-bomb chaser — of Los Galax's "Lamento de un Galax." Chicha's deepest indigenous roots are also evident in the sublime and sinuous deep Amazonian cumbia — previously distilled on the impeccable Roots of Chicha collection. Here, they're represented by Los Mirlos, Los Wembler's de Iquitos, and the haunting Juaneco y su Combo. Guitars fuzz out, weep, delay and distort throughout the anthology, if not quite so wildly as you might imagine (Los Beltons' crazy "Cumbia Pop" being the obvious exception). At the end of the day, it's still the interlocking rhythms of multiple percussionists that weaves the hammock in which these cumbias swing.
